Engineering

Transport engineering

Aerospace engineering

Aviation safety

Human factors and ergonomics

Chromatography

Human error

Charter

Archaeology

Risk analysis (engineering)

Environmental health

Business

Mechanical engineering

Poison control

Psychology

Geography

Aviation

Applied psychology

Work (physics)

Civil aviation

Environmental science

Aviation accident

Medicine

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Sample (material)

Air transport

Forensic engineering

Situation awareness

Aeronautics

Progress in Aerospace Sciences

Human factors have been defined by the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) as "about people in their living and working situations; about their relationship with machines, with procedures and with the environment about them; and about their relationships with other people (at work)". Human factors contribute to approximately 75% of aircraft accidents and incidents. As such, understanding their influence is essential to improve safety in the aviation industry. This study examined the different human factors causations in a random sample of over 200 commercial air transport accidents and incidents from 2000 to 2016. The main objective of this study was to identify the principal human factor contributions to aviation accidents and incidents. An exploratory research design was utilised. The qualitative data were recorded in a database, and were coded into categories about the flights (including date, manufacturer, carrier, state of occurrence, etc). These categories were then analysed using Chi-Squared tests to determine which were statistically significant in terms of having an influence on the accidents/incidents. The most significant human factor was found to be situational awareness followed by non-adherence to procedures. In addition, charter operations proved to have a significantly higher rate of human factor related occurrence as compared to other type of operations. A significant finding was that Africa has a high rate of accidents/incidents relative to the amount of traffic and aircraft movements. These findings reflect some of the more noteworthy incidents that have received significant media attention, including Air Asia 8501 on the 28th of December 2014, TransAsia Airways 235 on the 4th of February 2015, and Air France 447 on the 1st of June 2009; these accidents resulted in a significant loss of lives where situational awareness and non-adherence to procedures were significant contributing factors.

A review of human factors causations in commercial air transport accidents and incidents: From to 2000–2016